Halo 3: ODST,
or just ODST as it widely referred to in the gaming community, is the
forth game release in the Halo series by Bungie. It was released on
September 22, 2009 for the Xbox 360
console and like its predecessors, is a
first person shooter game. The game consists of a campaign mode, and a new
multi-player mode called Firefight. The game sold for $60 (US) which met with
some criticism due to the rather short campaign length. However the game also
consisted of a disc which allowed Halo 3players access to all regular
Halo 3 multiplayer maps. If one had not already spent the money on all the
DLC map packs
available, you now had them on one disc. The game was the number
one selling game for the month of September and sold over 2.5 million copies
worldwide within its first two weeks of release.

ODST met with mixed
reviews amongst both the critics and the gaming community. The new Firefight
mode was a new style and was an overall success. The campaign was hit hardest
by the critics and the couch critics however. The campaign was said to be too
short for the price tag by many. The main protagonist “The Rookie” was picked
apart by many and even crowned as the lamest protagonist of the year by several
gaming magazines. Technical experts were pleased by the overall style of the
game, but they criticized Bungie for not upgrading their engines to allow for
true and full HD
in the graphic design. And for the first time ever, the music
score to a Halo game came under some criticism from some in the
community. Despite mixed reviews however, ODST fared decently, and still
sold millions of copies worldwide and received several awards through various
mediums.

The Story:

Halo 3: ODST breaks away
from the original Halo series and focuses on an elite group of UNSC combat soldiers
known as Orbital Drop Shock Troopers
(ODST’s). They are also
nicknamed the Helljumpers. The story references events in Halo 2as you,
The Rookie, and your fellow ODST squad are being dropped into
New Mombasa
right
as the Covenant
carrier that was over the city goes into slipstream. The
resultant energy wave causes your pod to crash into one of your teammates and
then crash-land completely off course, knocking you out for six hours.

The game then progresses from
different viewpoints. You start off as the Rookie, who is trying to make his
lone way through a Covenant occupied city, to meet up with his teammates or team
leader, and complete various tasks along the way. As you go, the city’s AI
become both your guide and assistant. At various points however, the game
switches over to various other members of the team and the player assumes their
identity for that portion of the game/mission.

In the beginning cut-scene of the
game, the player is introduced to the team who is lead by Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck. Buck immediately introduces a new addition to their team, the ONI
agent, Captain Veronica Dare. As the game progresses, it becomes clear that
Buck and Dare had a previous romantic entanglement that ended when she walked
out on him. It also becomes clear that Dare has orders and an agenda that she
is keeping from the rest of the team.

Dare and the
Rookie finally meet up where you (as the Rookie) finally find out what that
agenda is. You are also let in on a carefully guarded ONI secret: the
Huragok
or Engineers are a species that are enslaved by the Covenant and despise them as
much as the humans. Dare, the Rookie and Buck work together to escort one of
them to safety as it interfaced with the city’s AI before it finally crashed and
holds valuable intel both from the AI and its own extensive knowledge. It ends
with the standard climactic battle towards freedom, and finishes with a
cut-scene that takes place a month later. In this scene Sergeant Johnson
- well
known from his role in the original series - is seen accompanied by Admiral Hood
as they prepare to question Engineer Vergil about what it knows.

Gampeplay:

ODST
in its campaign form, shares some similarities to the original Halo: Combat
Evolvedgame. The player doesn’t have shields, but as you take damage the
screen changes to a red tint to indicate the level of danger you are in until
you finally start losing health on the HUD’s health bar meter. Once health has
been lost, players must then look for a health pack to be fully healed. There
are a number of the standard weapons, with the addition of the ‘silenced’ SMG.
One thing that Halo fans were happy to see was the return of the zoom
scope on the pistol. Since a large portion of the game is played at nighttime,
another feature that was incorporated into the game was the implementation of
the “VISR”
which is a form of night-vision
that outlines both buildings and
enemies. Like night-vision it doesn’t function well in broad daylight, but it
helps tremendously when getting around in dark settings and it will help outline
enemies that are using invisibility.

Vehicle control was much the same
as Halo 3, although many felt that the drivability for the Mongoose
-
which is your primary vehicle of use in this game - was improved. One major
difference in the game, was the limited abilities of your character. As a
Spartan
with shielded armor and superhuman strength and abilities, one could do
things like grenade jump and jump impossible heights without worrying too much.
In ODST you are just a normal human and pulling off such stunts as
grenade jumping is going to cost you dearly, and forget jumping that ten foot
pillar Master Chief
could hop over even if a Hunter
was tied to his back.

Bungie also incorporated an
Easter Egg hunt
in this game as well. Through out the city there are terminals
that you can interface with that will tell a story of certain events leading up
to the siege on the city and a politician
at his corrupt finest. Due to a time
constraints, the developers only introduced one new species into the game: the
Huragok, or Engineers. These floating and highly volatile creatures are really
a form of biological supercomputers that have been enslaved by the Covenant.
They will not attack unless provoked, even then its mostly a defensive
mechanism. Unfortunately, they provide any nearby Covenant enemies with a type
of shielding that requires skill and smarts to overcome. The control scheme is
once again slightly different, but pressing the back button provides a variety
of useful intel and information that can great help a player work through the
game. There is of course, the standard Achievement list, and modifiers that
allow for gamers to up the challenge, difficulty level, and re-playability of
the game.

The big
change from this game versus other Halo games came in the multiplayer
mode. Unlike previous games where everyone battled in a versus game against
other players, ODST introduced “Firefight”. Firefight consisted of up to
four players all fighting on the same side against waves of Covenant enemies.
As you complete the campaign and on varying difficulty levels players can unlock
more characters to play and customize in the Firefight mode. There are five
waves of enemy reinforcements to each round. There are three rounds to a set
and at the end of a set, swarms of grunts converge on the players in a Bonus
round. Players have 60 seconds to kill as many enemies as they can. At the
beginning of the game, the player or team is given seven lives. As the rounds,
sets, and points accumulate players will be awarded more lives if they survive
without being killed. The Bonus Wave is the only time when deaths are not taken
away from the team’s collective life count. A death in the Bonus Wave however,
is penalized by not respawning until the wave is over. Once all lives are
expended, players who die will not respawn until the next round, and if the Last
Man Standing survives, he is awarded a bonus. As the match progresses, various
skulls are activated, increasing the level of difficulty. The great thing about
Firefight is that as long as a player stays alive, the game could go on
indefinitely.

My Opinion:

Like many other gamers I had
mixed feelings about ODST. I enjoyed the game, and I loved the new
Firefight mode as it was unique. But I was one of the many who didn’t think it
was worth the full price tag. Sure it came with the extra Halo 3
multiplayer Map pack disc…but by then I had already purchased all the DLC map
packs. I enjoyed the story for the most part, but I was a tad annoyed with the
skipping back and forth in the timeline. The jumping forward and back several
hours, through out the game made things a bit confusing at times. So while the
story and characters were fun, the flow was broken up so often that it made it
hard to follow.

The graphics were completely
different in this game and I have to say that I really liked the noire feeling
that Bungie went with for ODST. Accompany the visual style of the game
design, was a completely new style of music for the game. Martin O’Donnell
was
once more behind the reigns of the sound and music for the game, but he gave
everything a very jazzy feel. The jazzy style was met with great reviews, but
it made it difficult for the music to smoothly transition into proper battle
style music. The result was a little ear bending and jarring at times, which is
where some of the rare criticism of Halo themed music came into play.

As I said I enjoyed the Firefight mode
immensely, and Bungie’s Achievements for this mode provided a great challenge
for friends to try and accomplish. The return of the scope to the pistol was a
favorite change for me personally, but I thought the silenced SMG was pretty
useless as a weapon overall. Another challenge that I enjoyed was dealing with
‘shielded’ enemies. Especially if you were trying to accomplish the Achievement
which requires you not to shoot and kill any of the Engineers - which would be
the quickest way to make the shields fail.

Overall, I
enjoyed the game and I replayed it quite a bit along with spending many a long
night trying to get those Firefight Achievements. If I had to do it all over
again though, I probably would have waited for a bit so that I could have bought
the game at a cheaper price.